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Diversity of moderate El Niño events evolution: role of air–sea interactions in the eastern tropical Pacific

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Abstract

In this paper we investigate the evolution of moderate El Niño events during their developing phase with the objective to understand why some of them did not evolve as extreme events despite favourable conditions for the non-linear amplification of the Bjerknes feedback (i.e. warm SST in Austral winter in the eastern equatorial Pacific). Among the moderate events, two classes are considered consisting in the Eastern Pacific (EP) El Niño events and Central Pacific (CP) events. We first show that the observed SST variability across moderate El Niño events (i.e. inter-event variability) is largest in the far eastern Pacific (east of ~ 130°W) in the Austral winter prior to their peak, which is associated to either significant warm anomaly (moderate EP El Niño) or an anomaly between weak warm and cold (moderate CP El Niño) as reveals by the EOF analysis of the SST anomaly evolution during the development phase of El Niño across the El Niño years. Singular value decomposition (SVD) analysis of SST and wind stress anomalies across the El Niño years further indicates that the inter-event SST variability is associated with an air–sea mode explaining 31% of the covariance between SST and wind stress. The associated SST pattern consists in SST anomalies developing along the coast of Ecuador in Austral fall and expanding westward as far as 130°W in Austral winter. The associated wind stress pattern features westerlies (easterlies) west of ~ 130°W along the equator peaking around June–August for EP (CP) El Niño events. This air–sea mode is interpreted as resulting from a developing seasonal Bjerknes feedback for EP El Niño events since it is shown to be associated to a Kelvin wave response at its peak phase. However equatorial easterlies east of 130°W emerge in September that counters the growing SST anomalies associated to the air–sea mode. These have been particularly active during both the 1972 and the 2015 El Niño events. It is shown that the easterlies are connected to an off-equatorial southerly wind off the coast of Peru and Ecuador. The southerly wind is a response to the coastal SST anomalies off Peru developing from Austral fall. Implications of our results for the understanding of the seasonal ENSO dynamics and diversity are discussed in the light of the analysis of two global climate models simulating realistically ENSO diversity (GFDL_CM2.1 and CESM).

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Acknowledgements

B. Dewitte acknowledges supports from FONDECYT (projects 1171861 and 1151185) and from LEFE-GMMC (project STEPPE). K. Takahashi acknowledges supports from the PP 068 program. This work was granted access to the HPC resources of CALMIP supercomputing center, under the allocation 2016-1044 and 2017– 1044. We thank the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments that help improving the original manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centro de Estudios Avanzado en Zonas Áridas (CEAZA), Coquimbo, Chile

    Boris Dewitte

  2. Departamento de Biología, Facultad de Ciencias del Mar, Universidad Católica del Norte, Coquimbo, Chile

    Boris Dewitte

  3. Millennium Nucleus for Ecology and Sustainable Management of Oceanic Islands (ESMOI), Coquimbo, Chile

    Boris Dewitte

  4. Laboratoire d’Etudes en Géophysique et Océanographie Spatiales, Toulouse, France

    Boris Dewitte

  5. Instituto Geofísico del Perú, Lima, Peru

    Ken Takahashi

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Correspondence to Boris Dewitte.

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This paper is a contribution to the special collection on ENSO Diversity. The special collection aims at improving understanding of the origin, evolution, and impacts of ENSO events that differ in amplitude and spatial patterns, in both observational and modeling contexts, and in the current as well as future climate scenarios. This special collection is coordinated by Antonietta Capotondi, Eric Guilyardi, Ben Kirtman and Sang-Wook Yeh.

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Dewitte, B., Takahashi, K. Diversity of moderate El Niño events evolution: role of air–sea interactions in the eastern tropical Pacific. Clim Dyn 52, 7455–7476 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-017-4051-9

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